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This is a small sample of Hal Herring's published articles, papers and journals.For specific article inquiries, please contact Hal directly.

Articles are sorted by category and alphabetically. Use the site search tool below to find topics most quickly.

Outdoor & Environmental Writing

Public Lands

Public Lands Not for SaleBackcountry Hunters and AnglersA deep investigative report on the economic benefits of the USA's Federally Managed Public Lands - as opposed to sale of those lands to individual states.

Locked OutTheodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership"In an increasingly crowded and pay-to-play world, America’s 640 million acres of public lands – including our national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands – have become the nation’s mightiest hunting and fishing strongholds. This is especially true in the West, where according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 72 percent of sportsmen depend on access to public lands for hunting."

Coastal Development

The Panhandle ParadoxMiller McCune - August 17, 2009Are The St. Joe Company’s development plans for huge swaths of timberland in northwest Florida an environmentally sensitive ‘New Ruralism’ or a serious threat to irreplaceable ecosystems?Perhaps both.

Conservation

How to Make Your Own Yellowstone, Mexican StyleHigh Country News - November 11, 2002At Boquillas Crossing on the southern edge of Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande is slow and muddy, waist-deep and 50 yards across. You can hail a boatman from the group of men who loiter around the gravel bars on the Mexican side, playing cards on the tailgate of a pickup, their saddle horses tethered in the mesquites. One of them will drop his cards and give you a ride across the river for a small fee.

Room to ManeuverThe Nature Conservancy Magazine - Winter 2004A new partnership between conservation groups and the Department of Defense has formed to confront a common enemy: unregulated urban growth that threatens both biodiversity and military readiness.

Today’s Sportsmen And Sportswomen Are A Powerful Force For ConservationThe Nature Conservancy Magazine - Autumn 2006When a hunter dreams of a trophy elk, thoughts run to frozen mornings deep in the Rocky Mountains. Minnesota seldom comes to mind, and there’s little reason why it should,since the state issued only five permits to hunt elk last year. Nonetheless, when The Nature Conservancy needed help acquiring a critical 800-acre piece of Minnesota grassland, it was the hunters of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, based in faraway Montana, who stepped up.

Hunting on the Range: Amenity Ranch Boom Spreads EastJanuary 15, 2007Wide open spaces inherent to central Montana ranches like this one are attracting a new wave of buyers looking for "amenity ranches" outside the scope of the West's traditional hot spots.

Energy

Burning Down the House to Keep WarmMiller-McCune - August 19, 2008Only a fool would support expanded domestic exploration — offshore or elsewhere — under the Bush administration’s dysfunctional energy policies. Here’s how those policies need to change for America to responsibly find the energy it needs.

Connecting the Gulf Disaster to the Pinedale AnticlineField & Stream - June 1, 2010On June 4th, a judge in Washington, D.C. will hear the first arguments in a lawsuit brought against the U.S. Department of the Interior by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

Energy Development is Ruining Public Hunting Grounds in the WestField & Stream - April 30, 2006Alan Lackey has been an elk and mule deer guide in the high country of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains for over 21 years. When he is not pulling a pack string into the mountains, he’s a ranch manager in Roy, New Mexico. Before that, he owned the Chevrolet dealership in Raton, where he also served as the president of the Chamber of Commerce. By his own description, he is a deeply conservative person.

Exploring Colorado’s Roan Plateau: Day OneField & Stream - July 21, 2010I first saw Colorado’s Roan Plateau in the spring of 2004, while researching a story on energy development for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s Bugle magazine.

The Promise and Peril of Shale OilNew West - August 13, 2008New technologies and high oil prices are sparking renewed interest in shale oil. But can it be extracted economically - and without devastating environmental consequences?

The Rocky Mountain Front Faces New Oil-and-Gas ThreatHigh Country News - October 12, 1998Chief Mountain, a 9,000-foot outlying peak west of here, stands like a boundary marker on the Rocky Mountain Front, where glacier-carved peaks meet rolling plains. It also marks the political intersection of Glacier National Park’s eastern boundary with the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

Why Better Refrigerators Mean Bigger DeerField & Stream - April 29, 2010It is very hard to imagine- and I’ll admit that most of us wouldn’t want to try how refrigerators and air conditioners running in Atlanta, Georgia could affect our chances to take a trophy mule deer in Wyoming or Montana. But bear with me. It is more interesting, and more real, than it sounds.

Firearms

Mystery Rifle: Muzzleloader Found in MontanaField & Stream - March 26, 2009Maxx Martel, from Glendive, Montana, is known as a man who finds things. “When I’m out, I look around everywhere. Just yesterday, I found a .45-70 bullet, and an 1857 penny, the kind with an eagle on it.” Martel’s country is the wide open grasslands and huge cottonwood bottoms of the Yellowstone River.

The Shootrite Katana RifleTactical Gear Magazine - Fall 2010In JKD, one does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

Water

Confining the YelllowstoneField & Stream - December 31, 1999One of America’s greatest trout rivers is becoming a victim of its own wildness. The Yellowstone is the ultimate American trout river. At least, it used to be.

PLANNING IN THE WEST. Wild Rivers and Riprap: The Case of the YellowstoneNew West - October 2, 2006It is a dream shared by millions, many of them coming to the end of successful careers in the rush of city and suburb, the endless juggling of money and family, the stress of the deal and the commute. The dream is of a western river like Montana’s Yellowstone, and a home within sight of the place where a clear ripple of shoal water falls away to a deeper green, and a trout rises to a passing caddis fly.

Salmon Paradise Under FireField & Stream - September 28, 2008There are places in this world, if you are a hunter and a fisherman, that own a kind of mythical power, places where every one of the basic elements of what drives us are intact, and present. If we are lucky, some of those places are close to home.

Strangling the Last Best RiverHigh Country News - April 12, 1999Montana statesman Mike Mansfield, summing up the highlights of his career in the U.S. Senate, claimed to be most proud that he “had saved the Yellowstone River from the Corps of Engineers.” But while the Yellowstone is still the longest un-dammed river in the Lower 48, it is now a long way from “saved.”

Field and Stream Report: The Truth about Mercury and the Fish You Eat Field & Stream - March 31, 2004It is the most basic of human rights: to fish for food, to take from the bounty of our waters a healthy meal for ourselves and our families. The practice is as old as mankind, from a caveman bent over a river with a sharpened stick to a modern angler powering a cast into the waves with a surf rod.

How Three Men Survived Attacks by Grizzly BearsField & Stream - January 31, 2005Wally Cash has hunted and guided the Pilgrim Creek elk country near Moran, Wyoming, for 44 seasons. On September 21, 2004, Cash was hunting alone, planning to cross a ridge and meet up with one of his partners. His hunting party had killed a bull the day before, and the fresh gut pile was nearby.

Predator Hunters For The EnvironmentHigh Country News - June 25, 2007Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife has protected a lot of Western land and species. It’s also killed a lot of coyotes (and can’t wait to go after some wolves).

Wolves and Elk: Hunting for AnswersBugle - September/October 2005It’s been five years since we last focused a major special section on wolves. Much has changed in that time. We have a better understanding of some things, yet countless questions remain. This concludes a two-part series that explores the many facets of the relationships between wolves, elk, people and the land. We hope this series, taken as a whole, offers a clear, accurate, even-handed appraisal of wolves in elk country.

The Killing FieldsMissoula Independent - March 9-16, 2006Vol. 17, No.10A buffalo hunt turned into a slaughter on the border of Yellowstone National Park. Could slaughter be the key to setting the bison free?

How the Gray Wolf Lost it's Endangered StatusHigh Country News - May 29, 2011From the beginning, it was clear that the resurgent wolf population would need at least the threat of legal action to survive...

The Creature of McCone County, Part IA Montana Wolf Mystery & the Fury it BreedsMarch 29, 2006The creature, whatever it is, came out of Montana's own McCone County, wandering from the rough breaks of Timber Creek.....

Investigative Reporting

Dasen Girls

Part 1: Inside the World of the ‘Dasen Girls’NewWest.com - March 17, 2005When the police arrested Kalispell businessman Dick Dasen on prostitution charges last year, it seemed there had to be more to the story than a wealthy man paying for sex. There was more. A lot more.

Part 2: A Mother’s Worst NightmareNewWest.com - March 17, 2005When Angela Guzman-Rogers first met Dick Dasen at Deana Dimler’s hair salon, he started giving her money with no strings attached. But her mother Connie knew something was wrong. Very wrong.

Part 3: A Pillar of the CommunityNewWest.com - March 18, 2005Dick Dasen was a successful entrepreneur and investor, an observant Christian, and a generous supporter of local charities. The story of his secret life seemed too extreme to be true.

Part 4: ‘Our Give-A-Shitters Were Broken’NewWest.com - March 18, 2005Jenna Clark and Summer Rae Mahlen were deep in the Kalispell meth scene, mainlining the drug and taking lucrative ‘appointments’ with Dick Dasen. But as their friend Angela once told them, there were huge sacrifices to be made.

Part 5: The Scourge of Rural AmericaNewWest.com - March 19, 2005In the Flathead Valley of Montana, as in many rural areas, methamphetamine is breeding crime and destroying lives at a shocking rate. Yet for most of those who fall into the grip of the drug, the only “treatment program” available is prison.

Part 6: Crime and PunishmentNewWest.com - March 21, 2005Kim Neise is already in jail for procuring underage girls for Dick Dasen, and a number of other ‘Dasen Girls’ now have prostitution convictions on their records. Yet for all hissordid behavior, it’s not clear whether Dasen himself will land in prison.